Dear Linux community,
In these unpredictable and often challenging times, I feel it’s more important than ever to pause and share heartfelt wishes. Merry Christmas to each and every one of you!
Let this holiday season be a moment of peace, where you can step back, breathe, and find some calm amidst the chaos. Take the opportunity to reconnect, reflect, and perhaps even find inspiration for the year ahead.
May your days be filled with joy, your systems stay secure, and your kernels remain stable. Here's to a festive season full of positivity and open-source spirit!
Warm wishes,
Your fellow penguin at heart.
P.S.: I had very little time, so the whole thing, was AI accelerated! Please forgive me :-)
AI structure can be pretty obvious if you know which English weapons it loves to spam. Let's walk it through (sorry for the wall of text lmfao):
I skip the image because the chimney mistake and overdone shading is obvious
So yeah this is at least 90% OpenAI. Too fuckin' bad.
That was really helpful. Do you have any more tips on spotting ai generated text?
Sorry for the wall of text again c:
(CLICK HERE FOR BIG WALL)
AI text as a whole is usually structured, neutral-positive to positive shallowness. It's called slop because it's easy to make a lot of substanceless, nutrientless goo. One common structure is
What do we spot? Sets of three, largely perfect/riskless formal grammar (grammar perfection is not inhuman -- but a human might, say, take the informal risk of using lotsa parentheses (me...)), uncreative colon titles, SEO-style intros and conclusions, an odd corporate-style ethics hangup, em-dashes (the long —), and some of the stuff in that reddit link I mentioned are often giveaways.
Here's some examples in the wild:
Playing Dumb: How Arthur Schopenhauer Explains the Benefits of Feigned Ignorance. PeopleAndMedia. has useless headings and the colon structure I mentioned. There's also phrases like "Let's delve" and "unexpected advantage" -- ChatGPT likes pretending to be unconventional and has specific diction tics like "Here's to a bright future!" One interesting thing is that the article uses some block quotes and links -- this is rare for AI.
Why is PHP Used. robots.net. This is from a "slop site", one that is being overrun by AI articles. Don't read the whole thing, it's too long. Skim first. See how many paragraphs start with words like "additionally", "moreover", "furthermore", like a grade school English lit student? Furthermore (lol), look at the reasonings used:
ChatGPT-esque vocabulary is used (this is something you unfortunately get a feel for), and the reasoning isn't very committal. Instead of evaluating some specific event deeper, the article just lists technologies and says stuff like "PHP has comprehensive and well-maintained documentation, providing in-depth explanations, examples, and guides." So what if there's docs? Everyone has documentation. Name something PHP docs do better or worse. Look at this paragraph (SKIM IT, don't read deeply):
It doesn't actually SAY ANYTHING despite its length. The paragraph can be compressed to: "CodeIgniter has a light footprint". It doesn't even say whether we're talking about comparative speed, memory usage, or startup time. It's like they paid someone (openAI) to pad word count on the ensmallening I mentioned.
Before reading something, check the date. If it's after 2020, skims to be too long and not very deep, and has too many GPT tics (tricolons, vocab like "tapestry/delve", the SEO shit structure), then it's AI slop. Some readers actively avoid post-2020 articles but I can't relate.
edit: clarified that perfect grammar is humanly doable, but GPT-style riskless formal grammar is still distinct from grammatical human text
Errors can give away that a human typed something, but knowing proper grammar, spelling, and syntax of English is totally neutral—if not to be somewhat expected from a native speaker/typer with a lifetime to learn the language they speak (especially if we consider how many Anglophones are monolingual + educated + have access to technology like spell check meaning there is little excuse for not having English mastery).
In my education, I got a public apology from a teacher letting the class know they tried to dig up proof of plagiarism in my persuasive papers, but for the first time proved themself incorrect on a plagiarism hunch. Humans are capable of writing well.
edit: updated accordingly for clarity
Ah, I mean proper grammar as in formal, largely riskless grammar. For example, AI wouldn't connect
with pluses, like a human would.
Not sure how I'd phrase that though. Maybe "perfect, risklessly formal grammar" as I just tried to call it? (i.e. if AI trainers consider using +'es a "risk", as opposed to staying formal and spick n' span clean).
Perfect grammar is humanly possible but there is some scrutiny that can be applied to GPT-style grammar, especially in the context of the casually-toned web (where 100%ed grammar isn't strictly necessary!).